


and not a drop to drink

by Electrosa



Series: gielinor oneshots [6]
Category: Runescape
Genre: Gen, Gore, azzy kicking ass and taking names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 17:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12775767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Electrosa/pseuds/Electrosa
Summary: Drakan fucks around shortly after the Betrayal, rounding up Zarosian stragglers, and decides he wants a bigger fight.





	and not a drop to drink

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a kind of fan-sequel to The Old Blood, which is an amazing piece of canon lorefic and y'all should go read it.
> 
> Warnings: gore and blood. Once again, please tell me if it needs the explicit tag.

The voice was quieter than before, but no less insistent. Sibilant, wavering in and out of hearing, it… reprimanded him. That was the worst. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t furious at him, livid for what had been done. It simply told him, in quiet, aggravatingly patient tones, how disappointing and regressive this was.

Were it anyone else, he would have torn them to quivering shreds and laughed at the ease of it. Instead, now it rather felt like that was happening to him, in agonisingly slow increments. He couldn’t shred the haunting voice of a dead god, and hadn’t brought himself to mention it to any of the others involved in the rebellion. He feared a confirmation of his affliction more than he would have balked at derision of his mental state.

Between whispers he was given to subtle, undermining thoughts that he quelled immediately. Whether or not the voice was speaking utterly new words to him, not pale echoes, whether or not it seemed, in fact, to react his environment and actions, he would not let any suspicions enter his mind. It was dead. He had been there himself to see the once-imposing body crumble to the floor, empty of life.

Hah.

Empty words from an empty lord.

No matter his confidence, Drakan was not inclined towards inaction, and if he could not silence the voice itself, he could gleefully carry on silencing the voices of those who praised it in blind prayer.

And while there were certainly plans being formed in the writhing confusion, Drakan had time of his own to spend. Let them plan. When he was needed, he would be contacted. His actions were his own until then.

The next question, then, was one of targets.

~

The empty lord’s followers had scattered to their various hiding places, either standing proud in the remaining fortresses or vanishing into the furthest territories. Senntisten still stood, frustratingly, but any attempt on it now would be military suicide without bolstered forces and further organisation. No, he could be content with sacking their smaller sanctuaries, gradually tightening the noose until it was ready to drop.

And if he managed to take out a central figure while he was at it? All the better.

Still, the crumbling empire was massive, and it took Drakan some days to encounter anything of value. Stragglers on the road held no information and served as nothing more than bland diversions. Arrival in the nearest village finally saw him achieve something of worth; the small group of priests quickly gave up what they knew. His thanks left the village shattered and smoking.

He carried on in this way, faint inklings confirmed piece by piece from every unfortunate on his path. Soon enough he was headed to Lassar, confident in the presence of a tribune or some other delightfully unaware faithful.

The voice had been silent in this time. He told himself that it was incensed by his predation of its followers. That was more satisfying.

When he landed on Lassar’s west-facing tower, the frost bit at his wings and curled through his hair in insidious crystals. The fortress was blanketed in snow, as always, but none fell from the slate-grey sky.

Time to see who was down there.

He leapt from the spire, plunging towards the crenellated roof, intending to smash through it. The stone gave way like damp wood, and he thudded to the next floor, hands to the ground and wings open. He lifted his head, straightened his legs, and–

The mass of ice erupted where he’d been, spikes lancing out millimetres from his face, chilling him more than the invading elements ever could. He looked up.

_I didn’t expect to see you here._

This was no simple tribune or trusted messenger. The visage behind the fading ice stood at eye-level with him, as cold as the spell he’d just cast.

“You still look like death, Azzanadra.”

“How droll, coming from you. Must you make such dramatic entrances?”

_**You draw my faithful’s ire, Drakan.** _

_**Step lightly.** _

Drakan snarled at the air, fangs bared, but allowed himself no further reaction than that. This was the same as last time. Those words were hollow, meaningless; no distraction would mar his stroke of luck here.

“So this is where you scurried off to? So exposed, in such a remote garrison?”

Azzanadra’s voice was haggard when he replied, but the way it vibrated across the air caught Drakan’s attention. All mahjarrat had that unearthly vibrato to their voices - some tried to hide it, some revelled in it - but among them Azzanadra’s had always stood out. Drakan could easily remember the way a room’s air would shimmer as if in heat waves when the high priest’s anger was stirred. He spoke in that tone now, slurred with tiredness but carrying a very definite  _edge_.

“I go where I am needed, Drakan. Surely even you can figure that one out.” Azzanadra sighed and stared accusingly from the gaping roof to the pile of rubble scattered beneath it. “Have you come to goad me, or are you here to rectify your previous mistake?”

Drakan’s wings shuffled and the last pretence of hesitation drained out of his expression. In the space of a thought, he rushed forward, claws tensed and mouth open to its full, horrifying angle.

_**You underestimate him.** _

He slammed headlong into an iron wall, jarred to his core. In front of him, mere tantalising inches, Azzanadra held up one hand, keeping the barrier with no apparent effort. Drakan roared and backed up, bringing his hand down on the demarcation in a crushing blow. If Azzanadra was going to play defensive, then Drakan would happily oblige. Let the mahjarrat exhaust himself on spells. That would make it so much easier to split his skull.

The second Drakan’s fist landed on the shield, Azzanadra vanished, and where once there had been a wall, there was now a matrix of ice racing up his arm, restricting movement and seeping into his veins. By the time he’d noticed, it had nearly encased his shoulder and the numbness had already seized his hand.

Drakan screeched and flared his own energy, expelling just enough to rid himself of the ice, and whirled around. That had been a stupid move. Getting close to a mahjarrat’s spell, no matter what it appeared to be, was a death sentence. His best options were speed and strength here.

“Would you like to try that again?” Azzanadra was a few feet off to the right, unruffled by the fight. His eyes burned a darker red than Drakan’s, a sight that surely would have cowed any lesser being. Drakan laughed and stalked forward. Fear tactics were his game. No fumbling shapeshifter would beat him there.

His foot met the ground at the same moment that a faint glow entered Azzanadra’s eyes. Drakan flinched and took to the air just in time to escape the plume of fire that exploded out of the ground. Beating his wings and veering to one side, he shot back until the full expanse of the room was between them. That was his second close call, and he hadn’t launched any attacks of his own. It was… unnerving.

Azzanadra had two unique advantages in combating a vampyre, ones which all mahjarrat shared. One of these Drakan was already contending with - it was impossible to read a mahjarrat’s mind the way he would so easily read a human or demon’s. This was, to his extreme displeasure, why those two attacks had come so dangerously close. He had to rely solely on his own speed and reflexes. It was like being blinded.

The other advantage was far more aggravating.

Drakan raised his hands to his sides, skin bathed in the blooming crimson light flowing from them. This battle would be decided by who connected first. There was no sense in restraining his most effective techniques. The spell arced forward and struck Azzanadra full in the chest, a bolt of infernal lightning that sought its target like predator to prey. He was pushed back by the sheer force of it, doubling over, and…

… stood right back up.

Mahjarrat had no blood. They were practically immune to the brunt of his magic.

_**You gamble with your life, Drakan.** _

Immutable, unfazed by a strike that would have rent anyone else in half, Azzanadra strode forward, iron-clad footsteps strangely muffled by the wind howling through the ruined roof.

“You really do need to try harder. You fight so poorly when you let your precious ‘instincts’ take over.” There it was again, that quiet disappointment. He would have preferred any other emotion as the impetus for Azzanadra to retaliate - grief or fury would have been wonderful - but instead he just repeated the same self-righteous sentiments that the voice did.

How utterly boring. He truly was Pontifex Maximus.

Drakan grinned at his opponent and opened his arms wide, as if shrugging.

“You want me to be  _civilised?_ ”

“No. Civility is beyond you; that much is clear. I want you to be intelligent.”

Azzanadra took one step forward, and Drakan lunged…

… grasped at empty air…

… lurched backward, an arm around his neck…

“You really aren’t concentrating.”

… and a pulse of magic that blasted a hole through his torso.

Immediately he reacted, shrieking vile half-words and slashing viciously at whatever was nearby. He connected - with something - and tore through it as deeply as he could, but by then his wound was already streaming blood, and the force around his neck had lifted only to return as another hard jolt of fire that threw him to the ground, sliding slickly across the uneven stone floor.

Drakan coughed, spattering the brick in front of him with red, watching as it frosted over in front of his eyes. He staggered upright, fangs clenched on the scream that wanted to wrench itself out of his lungs. Even as he noted, with some satisfaction, the blackened gouge on Azzanadra’s arm, he felt the pain creeping out from the wound and towards the rest of his body. Whatever foul spell it was that had hit him, Azzanadra clearly wasn’t generous enough to have let that be it.

The mahjarrat raised his unhurt hand and collected more power there, a roiling sphere of red light, a mockery of Drakan’s own magic. Moving slowly, almost uncaringly, he traced out a vague gesture, drawing his hand through the air. Drakan tensed, fighting down the increasing agony in readiness to move again, when–

He cried out and doubled over, dropping to the ground once more as so much of what was left of his blood was thrown out of him, pulled out through his wound, his mouth, his eyes–

He was left lying in a rapidly-freezing mire of crimson, barely mustering the energy to gasp for air and refuse the clouds of black flickering at the edge of his vision.

Outmatched in his own skill. How disgusting.

_**You could have been so much.** _

Those deadened footsteps came closer, and Drakan scrabbled to his feet through no force other than the driving desire to prove that hellish voice wrong and tear it out of his head. He had a matter of seconds to register the sight of Azzanadra preparing one last spell - to register his failing limbs - to take what little blood he had left and force it to his wings - and to beat them as strongly as he could, shooting in an unsteady line towards the hole he’d rent just minutes prior.

He made it through, clipping one wing on the jagged masonry, and fell rather than flew away from the fortress. He landed in a ditch and crumpled against the rocks, vision swimming and head pounding as he felt himself bleed out. If he was fast, he would survive this - just barely - but he had to be fast first.

He had more time than he thought, and managed a desperate teleport after an excruciating moment of fighting for his body to cooperate. Azzanadra hadn’t come after him.


End file.
